World News - Race dropped in drawing school district’s lines Southern California board was sued by parents for ‘gerrymandering’ kids

School board trustees in this Orange County suburb have voted to stop using students' race to determine where they will go to school. The vote Monday was part of a settlement with parents who sued the Capistrano Unified School District for including ethnicity as a factor when new school boundaries were drawn last year. As part of the settlement, the group Neighborhood Schools for Our Kids has agreed to drop its lawsuit. Also, students in the predominantly white Talega neighborhood will be permitted to continue attending their current high school instead of a new campus that opens next fall, said Paul Beard, a lawyer for the parents. "We are happy that the district is abandoning a policy that can only be described as racial gerrymandering," Beard said in a news release.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com

To evade authorities chasing him, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski kept shoes with smaller soles attached to the bottom in his reclusive Montana cabin, according to evidence released 10 years after his capture. The shoes were intended to make it appear as if a person with smaller footprints were walking in them, investigators believe. Kaczynski, 64, is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for a bombing spree that lasted from 1978 to 1995. The blasts from homemade bombs killed three people and injured 23. The government had collected evidence from his Lincoln, Mont., cabin for a trial, but it was never publicly released because Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998. San Francisco's KPIX-TV aired a report Tuesday about the evidence. A source close to the case gave the station photographs of the items, which included his typewriter, a handmade gun of wood and metal, writings, and the hooded sweat shirt and sunglasses featured in his FBI wanted photos....http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-29-unabomber-evidence_x.htm?csp=34

Britain has allowed 170 secret CIA flights connected to the illegal seizure of terror suspects to make stopovers at its airports, a draft European Parliament report claimed. The number is almost 100 more than previously admitted by ministers and will be used by MPs to demand a full parliamentary inquiry into the practice of extraordinary rendition. The report, by an Italian Socialist MEP, concluded that at least 1,245 CIA flights had flown into European airspace and that Britain was second only to Germany — which allowed 336 — in the number of stopovers. Ten EU countries were named as allowing stopovers. Giovanni Claudio Fava’s draft report “deplores” the level of co-operation Geoff Hoon, the Europe Minister, gave the MEPs, and condemns the rendition of one British citizen and three British residents, two of whom were said to have been seized on the basis of “partly erroneous information supplied by the UK security service MI5”. ...http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2477055,00.html

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday unanimously renewed the mandate of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq through the end of 2007, granting a request from the Baghdad government. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton welcomed the vote a day ahead of planned talks in Jordan between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on how to bring violence under control and whether Iran and Syria could help. The vote showed all countries in the region that the Security Council strongly backed "stability in Iraq and continued progress toward democracy," Bolton said. "We all share the same objective and I think that is something the neighboring countries need to take into account." But Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he regretted the resolution made no mention of the need to heal the deep divisions in Iraqi society, as Moscow had suggested. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2685585

Ecuador's president-elect Rafael Correa was once a Boy Scout, later a social worker in an impoverished highland Indian village and now describes himself as a Christian leftist. Childhood friends still recall Correa's natural leadership abilities and strong character on the soccer field. But during his run for the presidency, the tall and charismatic nationalist picked up a reputation for also being confrontational and uncompromising, traits that could add to Ecuador's political instability when he takes office in January. Correa, a friend of Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez, defeated banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, 56, in Sunday's presidential runoff. He has called Ecuadorean democracy a "partydocracy" designed to benefit parties rather than people, a view shared by many voters fed up with corruption, greed and incompetence in the political establishment....http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2685545

European countries knew about U.S. secret jails for terrorism suspects and have obstructed an investigation into the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, a draft European Parliament report said on Tuesday. It criticized a string of top EU officials including foreign policy chief Javier Solana and counter-terrorism coordinator Gijs de Vries, and complained of lack of cooperation from nearly all member states. The report said Nicolo Pollari, former head of Italy's SISMI intelligence service, had "concealed the truth" when he told a European Parliament committee in March that Italian agents had played no part in the CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric. On the contrary, SISMI officials played an active role in the abduction of Abu Omar, and it was "very probable" that the Italian government knew of the operation, the report said....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15934202/